The Secrets of Word of Mouth Marketing
Word of Mouth Marketing is as old as products and services. You can imagine tribes talking about where the best hunting or gathering grounds were, Medieval markets teeming with talk of who had the best goods, and explorers enticing people to new worlds with stories of golden cities and endless riches. We are humans and talking is how we communicate- it’s only natural that we would talk about which products and services are better and best- that’s the essence of the secrets of word of mouth marketing.
The alchemy of turning performance and quality into buzz among humans is fickle, but there are enduring elements of successful word of mouth marketing programs that can easily be forgotten and lead to a fizzle rather than a buzz. How and why do we tell other people about something? How can that be harnessed intentionally?
The Secrets of Word of Mouth Marketing
1. Easy- Make your message easy to talk about. Not a tagline, not a complicated process, but a simple name, a picture, or a basic concept with an easily relayed message attached to it. Think of Word of Mouth marketing like a huge, long game of telephone- the more complicated the message the less it is right when it gets passed on.
2. Call to Action- Word of mouth marketing is not about building your brand- it’s about getting people to do something, go somewhere, buy something. People don’t spend much time passing on messages about how much they like Lucky Charms cereal just to talk about it- they do talk about the toy they got in the last box, or the great new interest rate on their CD at Bank of America, or the band they just heard about. The secret here is giving them something to talk about.
3. Tell the Right People- This can mean the right targeted demographic or the right kind of people. If you are selling surfboards you don’t put up a billboard in Colorado, right? One, you don’t need to have an audience that is that broad- what you want to do is tell the surfing community, and they are too spread out to throw up a billboard. Second, you don’t even need to tell every surfer- you want to tell the people who tell the surfing community what’s cool. You want to tell the people who set the trends, called Influencers in the Word of Mouth Marketing world. Tell them, burt also tell the people who talk the most- they may not be the coolest or own the store or star in the show, but there are certain people who just like to tell other people about good products- it’s the basis for Twitter, and it’s who will be difficult to find, but super-rewarding when you do.
4. Keep the Quality- Make sure whatever you are doing, selling a product or providing a service, stays as good as it was when you started. If you own an ice cream shop and word gets around that your ice cream is the best, don’t start to skimp on the chocolate sauce or make the scoops a little smaller to bulk up the profit margin. Those same people who talked about your product being wonderful will start talking just as much or more about it “not being what it used to be…”
5. Incentivize- This can be as simple as humor or knowledge, for something like a viral video, or a blatant coupon or money off on something if it’s a targeted marketing campaign. People respond to positive reinforcement, right? People want free stuff- people want to be rewarded for what we do.
The secrets of word of mouth marketing are simple in their form but challenging to carry-out and beautiful in their grace when they work. And there are more, maybe for another post- afterall, they wouldn’t be secrets if they were all told, right?…
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